February 5, 2012: Manning to Manningham

INDIANAPOLIS - It didn't quite have the shock of The Helmet Catch. Nothing really could. How can you beat a player pinning a miracle catch against his helmet, then holding on to it as a defender is desperately clawing at it? You can't. But you can come close. And when Eli Manning hit Mario Manningham down the sideline during Super Bowl XLVI, dropping the ball perfectly between two defenders who seemed to have position on Manningham, you could almost hear Patriot fans saying "it happened again?"

What happened was another Giants-Patriots Super Bowl, another fourth-quarter lead for the Patriots in such a Super Bowl, and another late-fourth quarter comeback for the Giants. After the Giants ended the Patriots perfect season in Super Bowl XLII, they met again on February 5, 2012, and played another heart-pounding game.

The Patriots took a 17-9 lead into halftime of the rematch, but the game really picked up late in the fourth quarter, after the Giants had cut that lead to 17-15. At the 4:05 mark, Tom Brady found Wes Welker for what should have been a first down on a 2nd-and-11 play, but Welker dropped the ball. Instead of facing the prospects of taking their final time out, the Giants instead got the clock stopped and, after getting another incomplete pass on the next play, forced a punt.

Taking over at their own 12 with 3:48 left, Manning found his man. As Manningham drifted down the sideline, Manning threw a perfect pass between two defenders. Manningham caught the ball with his arms outstretched, tiptoed in bounds, and held on. It was a stunning catch, a perfectly executed play all around. And it left the Patriots stunned. They challenged the play, losing one of their time outs when it was upheld, then tried to hold on.

But they didn't hold on. Instead, the Giants eventually drove to get to first and goal at the 7. After a first-down run for one yard, the Patriots used their second time out, and they were faced with a dilemma. If they still had two remaining time outs, they could try to stop the Giants, using both their time outs to stop the clock, and hopefully force a field goal with enough time left to respond. Instead, they had used a time out on the challenge, meaning the one they had left wasn't enough to stop the Giants from draining nearly all of the clock. So they did what they had to do: They let the Giants score.

That decision had a precedence in Super Bowl history, but the Giants were still caught off guard. When Ahmad Bradshaw unexpectedly saw a wide-open path to the end zone, he seemed to forget what to do. Remembering at the last moment that he was supposed to let the clock run down, Bradshaw stopped running at the 2-yard line, but his momentum carried him backwards into the end zone for what had to be the first accidental touchdown in Super Bowl history.

So the Giants might not have wanted to score on that play, but it's not like a touchdown was bad. Trailing 21-17, the Patriots now had to drive the length of the field for a touchdown in less than a minute and with only one time out. They only made it as far as midfield before being forced to try a final-play Hail Mary, one that missed connecting by less than a yard.

For the second time in four years, the Giants had upset the Patriots in the Super Bowl. This time, instead of a Helmet Catch, the catalyst was Manning to Manningham, a perfect pass and catch on the sideline.

February 3, 2008: Not quite perfect

GLENDALE, Ari. - How many things have to go exactly right in order for a football team to go undefeated? Everybody has to stay healthy, all those weird bounces the ball can take have to go in that team's favor, that team has to rise to the occasion throughout the season as they become a bigger and bigger target.

But perhaps most importantly, to go undefeated, you have to go an entire season without making the kind of killer mistakes that can cost you a game. And if you make such a mistake, you cannot let the other team capitalize.

Only two NFL teams have entered the Super Bowl undefeated, and both made potentially devestating mistakes late in the fourth quarter. The 1972 Dolphins had a scare when kicker Garo Yapremian tried to pass on a blocked field goal, fumbling a ball that led to the Washington touchdown that cut the Dolphins' lead to 14-7. Fortunately for Yapremian, the Dolphins held on to win the game and complete the perfect season.

For the 2007 Patriots, their killer mistake came with 1:17 left in the game. New England had just taken a 14-10 lead with 2:42 left in the fourth quarter, and the Giants were slowly starting to drive down field. As the Giants approached midfield Eli Manning threw a pass that seemed destined to be intercepted, but New England's Asante Samuel let the ball slip through his fingers to fall incomplete.

Now, defenders drop interceptions all the time. It's why they play defense instead of offense. There have been countless dropped interceptions that have led to nothing in NFL history, and there was no reason that a team like the Patriots should let one ruin their season. But this one felt different. It felt different because of the ease with which the Giants had driven downfield to score a touchdown on their previous drive, and it felt different because of how close the Giants had played the Patriots in the final regular season game. There were undoubtedly many Patriots fans who looked at each other after Manning's pass slipped through Samuel's fingers and thought "uh oh."

Yapremian's mistake has lived on in NFL history despite the fact that the Dolphins won that Super Bowl to finish undefeated. Samuel's dropped interception, though, has started to fade from the memory, mostly because of what happened on the next play.

Manning avoided the first sack attempt - by Adalius Thomas - by simply stepping up in the pocket. He squeezed out of the grasps of Jarvis Green and Richard Seymour by ... well, I don't think even Manning himself knows how he got out of that one. Nobody does. We just know that he somehow spun out of the grip of two players, stepped back, and fired it deep downfield, where David Tyree leapt up to catch it, then pinned it against his helmet as Rodney Harrison desperately tried to wrestle the ball away.

The "Helmet Catch" will go down as one of the most famous plays in Super Bowl history. It's true that it didn't officially win the game - Manning's pass to Plaxico Burress a few plays later did that - but it was over at that point. Anybody who saw Manning's escape and Tyree's catch knew that the Patriots' incredible run of luck was over, and that there was no way the Giants were going to be denied.

Manning's escape and Tyree's catch are going to be what live on about this game long after all the participants have retired (In fact, Tyree has already retired, with the Helmet Catch being his final catch in his NFL career). But that stunning, once-in-a-lifetime play would never have happened if Asante Samuel had just held on to the ball.

January 28, 1996: The best team money can buy

TEMPE, Ariz. - The NFL's salary cap for the 1995 season was $37.2 million per team. Jerry Jones' Dallas Cowboys made a combined $62 million that year. Using a combination of signing bonuses and delayed payments to get around the league's hard salary cap, Jones made his Cowboys the best team money could buy.

He needed that money to keep that team together. Keeping offensive stars like Emmitt Smith, Troy Aikman, and Michael Irvin together long-term was expensive, not to mention one of the best defenses in the game. Plus, after the Cowboys had lost the previous year's NFC Championship Game to San Francisco, Jones went out and signed San Francisco's best defender, Deion Sanders, to shore up his defense.

The addition of Sanders was the spark the Cowboys needed to get back to their third Super Bowl in four years for the 1995 season, and in that game, Sanders had the impact Jones was looking for. He caught one pass for 47 yards and returned one punt for 11 yards - numbers that don't look too impressive. But Sanders' mere presence on one side of the defensive secondary forced the Steelers to ignore that side of the field completely in their passing game. This led to more throws being forced to the other side, where cornerback Larry Brown was waiting.

Despite all the star power on the Cowboys sideline, the Steelers stayed in the game. Bam Morris outrushed the future hall of famer Smith for the game. And while Steelers quarterback Neil O'Donnell is remembered for having a particularly bad game - throwing three interceptions - two of his interceptions came in the fourth as the Steelers were desperately trying to come back, and he actually threw for more yards than Aikman in the Super Bowl.

The Steelers entered the fourth quarter trailing 20-7, but, with the help of a successful surprise onside kick, cut that deficit to 20-17 with 6:36 left. After the Steelers forced a Cowboys punt, they got the ball back with 4:01 left with a chance to drive for the lead. But Brown intercepted O'Donnell on the second play of the drive - Brown's second pick of the game - and returned the ball to the 6-yard line. From there, Smith clinched the Cowboys' third title in four years with his second touchdown run of the game.

Brown was named MVP of the Super Bowl, the first cornerback so honored, then signed a big free-agent contract with the Raiders and had only one interception the rest of his career. The Cowboys had become the first team to win three Super Bowls in four seasons and had become the first NFL franchise to reach five Super Bowl wins, but that was the peak of their dynasty. They only won one playoff game the next season, then didn't win another one until 2009.

Still, Jerry Jones' spending spree paid off in the victory in Super Bowl XXX, as the Cowboys won the game that cemented their legacy as the Team of the 90s.

January 27, 1991: Wide Right

TAMPA - Everything two teams worked for, starting in the heat of July and continuing through the cold of January, was coming down to this: Eight seconds left in the Super Bowl, the Giants leading 20-19, and the Bills lining up for a 47-yard field goal attempt. Six months of preparation and hard work, followed by 59 minutes of tough, grinding football, coming down to the right leg of the smallest man on the field.

Good snap, good hold, solid kick.

As Scott Norwood's kick sailed through the Tampa air, the Bills surely had to be holding their breath. While he was a reliable kicker in the cold Buffalo air, he hadn't been great kicking on a grass field. This kick was right at the edge of his range, right at the edge of where they would feel comfortable. They shouldn't have been in this position. Their fast-paced, quick-strike offense had been unstoppable during the season, never more so than in their 51-3 demolition of the Raiders in the AFC Championship Game. But that offense had been unexpectedly shut down by the Giants most of the game. They couldn't fathom how they had only scored 17 offensive points. And then they had given up that go-ahead field goal early in the 4th. No matter what the Bills did, the Giants always seemed to be one step ahead of them. They had made some headway on this final drive, but they would have preferred to be closer for Norwood's kick.

Good snap, good hold, solid kick.

As Norwood's kick sailed toward the goal post, many Giants felt sick. Some said they felt pins and needles. Everything they had done leading up to this game could be ruined in the next four seconds. They had started 10-0, but started scuffling. They had lost quarterback Phil Simms to a broken foot, but had perservered. They had beaten the powerful 49ers in the NFC Championship Game without scoring a touchdown. And they had executed a picture-perfect defensive game plan against the high-octane Bills offense. All that, and they still only had a one-point lead, still had to hold their breath and hope that they'd get a block, or that Norwood would miss. As the kick went away, they didn't get the block.

It was never good. Kicking from the right hashmark, Norwood kept the ball to the right, never bringing it back to the center. There was no hook, no sudden gust of wind. The ball was travelling straight. And it was going to the right. It never had a chance. The Giants had won the Super Bowl by a point.

But in the end, the celebration is the same. Whether you win by 30 or you win by 1, all that matters is that you won. Bill Parcells got the Gatorade bath, got carried off the field. He retired after the game, going out on top.

The Bills walked off the field in anguish; they would make it back to the Super Bowl three more times, but they would never come as close to victory. Buffalo fans still see Norwood's kick in their nightmares. The hopes of an entire season dashed in four seconds. Wide Right.

January 16, 1972: Birth of America's Team

NEW ORLEANS - There was a time when the Cowboys weren't known as America's team, but rather as the team that always seemed to be one season away from a championship. Led by quarterback Roger Staubach, that all changed in 1971.

During a cold, windy day at Tulane Stadium - the kickoff temperature of 39 degrees is the coldest in Super Bowl history - the Cowboys met the Dolphins for Super Bowl VI. It was the second straight Super Bowl appearance for the Cowboys, who had lost the previous year's game on a final-play field goal. This year's team was different in that Roger Staubach had finally been anointed as the team's starter halfway through the year. After naming Staubach as starter at the halfway point of the season, the Cowboys turned a 4-3 record into an 11-3 finish.

Meanwhile, the Dolphins were loaded, featuring many of the same players who would go undefeated the next season. Miami's defense wasn't well-known, but it was good; in fact, Dallas coach Tom Landry inadvertently gave the Dolphins their "No-Name Defense" name by saying before the game that he didn't know any of their defender's names, but they all scared him.

Landry didn't need to be worried. The Cowboys ran all over the Dolphins, outgaining them on the ground 252-80. Staubach threw two short touchdown passes, and the Cowboys scored in every quarter on their way to an easy 24-3 victory. In the 45-year history of the Super Bowl, this one was the closest the game has ever been to a shutout. In fact, it was the only Super Bowl where a team failed to score a touchdown.

The Dolphins were beaten, but they bounced back. It was their only loss in the 1972 calendear year, and Miami wouldn't lose again until September 23, 1973.

January 15, 1967: A Super Bowl

LOS ANGELES - Taken out of context, looking at it just from a standpoint of the quality of the game, the Packers' 35-10 win over Kansas City was not very memorable. Green Bay was expected to have no problem dispatching the Chiefs, and they didn't. The Packers never trailed, Kansas City never got close in the second half. The better team won, and easily.

But that doesn't tell the whole story. It doesn't tell of the Kansas City players who were so nervous that they were throwing up in the tunnel before the game. It doesn't tell of Green Bay coach Vince Lombardi being so nervous that he was shaking in a pregame interview. And it doesn't tell how this game was the beginning of a great tradition, something that started as a novel idea and eventually grew enough to become an unofficial American holiday.

The first Super Bowl wasn't even called that at first; it was called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. The NFL's representatives were the Green Bay Packers, who had won five league titles in seven years and were considered among the most pristigious NFL franchises. The Chiefs were seen as the perfect team to represent the AFL, as their owner, Lamar Hunt, had been instrumental in the formation of the league in 1960.

While the fact that the two leagues had agreed to an eventual merger gave credibility to the AFL, it was still widely believed that no AFL team would be able to play with the best the NFL had to offer. In fact, the NFL was seemed as so superior that the Packers almost had too much pressure on them, knowing how they'd be letting their league down if they lost. That explains why Lombardi was actually shaking during a pre-game interview. He didn't want to be the coach of the team that lost to an AFL team.

The nerves were there for the Chiefs, too. They had won the right to be the first AFL team to play an NFL team, and they didn't want to encourage the idea that the AFL was the weaker league.

Maybe it had to do with the strength of the leagues, or maybe the Packers were just good. Either way, it wasn't close. A 14-10 Packer lead kept growing in the second half as the Chiefs couldn't stop them. Little-known wide receiver Max McGee scored twice for Green Bay, as did running back Elijah Pitts. Bart Starr's 250 passing yards single-handedly topped Kansas City's 239 total yards.

Though the game itself was a bit of a downer, it started a tradition. Anticipation for the Super Bowl grew throughout the years, and today it's the most anticipated game on the American sports calendar.

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HONORABLE MENTION
January 15, 2006: INDIANAPOLIS - Quarterbacks have made scores of season-saving throws in football history. They've also kept the ball themselves for season-saving rushes. But the list of season-saving tackles by quarterbacks is short. In fact, Ben Roethlisberger might be the only one on the list. With the Steelers clinging to a 21-18 lead in the final minutes against Indianapolis, Pittsburgh was trying to punch one more into the end zone to clinch a victory. But Jerome Bettis fumbled for the first time all season and the ball was picked up by the Colts' Nick Harper. With only Roethlisberger to beat, Harper made a move that caused Roethlisberger to spin and lose his balance, but as he was falling, the Pittsburgh quarterback reached out and tripped Harper up by his ankles, preventing a sure touchdown. When the Colts' Mike Vanderjagt missed the tying field goal with 17 seconds remaining, Roethlisberger's tackle instantly became the most important ever made by a quarterback.

January 14, 1973: Perfect

LOS ANGELES - There's a reason there's only been one unbeaten and untied team in NFL history. It not only takes an incredible amount of talent, but also almost immeasurable luck to make it through the season without a slip-up.

The 1972 Dolphins are famous for being the NFL's only perfect team, and they certainly had a lot of luck along the way. For one thing, they had the easiest schedule in the NFL that season, with only two of their 14 regular-season opponents finishing with a winning record. The combined winning percentage of their opponents was .396, which was the second-easiest in team history. Still, though, they had to be good to win every game; a less talented team would have slipped up somewhere along the way.

The Dolphins trailed in the second half in both AFC playoff games, coming back to beat Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, the Washington Redskins cruised through the NFC playoffs, giving up only six points total in their two games to roll to the Super Bowl. The Redskins' domination might partially explain how the Dolphins, despite going into the Super Bowl undefeated, were actually underdogs for Super Bowl VII.

The game was played in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and in the first half, the Dolphins showed exactly why they went undefeated. Their "No-Name Defense" completely dominated the first two quarters, holding Washington to only 49 yards of offense. Miami's offense wasn't faring much better, though, but a Jim Kiick touchdown run with 18 seconds left in the half gave the Dolphins a 14-0 halftime lead.

In the second half, the Redskins put up the biggest challenge to the Dolphins perfect season. Using short passes, they were able to start moving downfield against Miami, starting with the first drive of the third quarter. The Redskins got as far as the Miami 17 yard line when quarterback Billy Kilmer saw running back Charley Taylor open at the 2-yard line. That's when the Dolphins got lucky again, as Taylor stumbled just as the pass was coming and he was unable to pull it in. After a sack, the Redskins missed a 32-yard field goal, keeping the score at 14-0.

After an interception ended the Dolphins next drive, the Redskins moved downfield again, moving 79 yards in 12 plays. On a second-down play from the Miami 10, Kilmer saw tight end Jerry Smith wide open in the end zone, but his pass hit the goalpost and fell incomplete - again, the Dolphins got lucky. The Redskins' next pass was intercepted in the end zone by Jake Scott, who returned it across midfield.

The biggest problem with the Redskins' failed scoring drive was how long it took. Though they were able to move down the field, it took them seven minutes to do so, so there were only five minutes left in the game when the Dolphins took over.

After getting one first down, the Dolphins lined up for the game-clinching field goal. Garo Yepremian's kick was blocked and bounced off toward the sideline. In one of the most famous mistakes in NFL history, Yepremian picked up the ball himself and tried to throw a pass, only to have the ball slip out of his hands. Making matters worse, Yepremian tried to bat the ball out of bounds, but succeeded only in knocking the ball up in the air again, and Washington's Mike Bass grabbed the ball out of mid air and returned it for the touchdown that made it 14-7.

The Dolphins were stunned, but they got another lucky break. Despite there being only 2:07 left in the game, the Redskins inexplicably chose to kick the ball away rather than try an onside kick. Washington forced the Dolphins to punt as they had hoped, but they had to use up the rest of their time outs while doing so. The Redskins got the ball back at the 30, needing to go 70 yards in 1:07 with no time outs.

Miami wasn't going to let that happen. After two incomplete passes and one pass completion that went for a loss, Miami's Vern Den Herder ended the game with a fourth-down sack as time expired.

The Dolphins lifted coach Don Shula on their shoulders and celebrated. They had become the first team in NFL history to go through a season without a loss or a tie. They remain the only team to have done so.

January 12, 1969: Broadway Joe

MIAMI - If you base everything on the results, strip away all context and just look at the man based only on what happened on the football field, Joe Namath was, at best, a below-average quarterback.

He only led the league in touchdown passes once, but led it in interceptions four times, and finished his career with 47 more interceptions than scoring throws. He twice led the league in passing yards, but he also led the league in attempts those seasons, artifically inflating those numbers. The highest passer rating he ever had in a season
was 74.3, which would have placed him better than only four full-time starters in 2010.

Yah, you say, but the game was different back then. It was much more difficult to pass in the 60s and 70s, and nearly every offense was geared around the run. Besides, a true measure of a quarterback's worth is wins and losses.

Fine, we'll go there. Namath played 13 seasons in pro football. He won 10 games exactly twice. He made the playoffs exactly twice. In fact, his career record as a starter is one game below .500. And then there's his lack of durability. He played every game in only six of his 13 seasons, and only played in 140 of a possible 197 games in his career.

No matter how you look at it, the only reason Joe Namath is in the Hall of Fame, the only reason we remember him at all, is one sentence he uttered. At a dinner before Super Bowl III, at which the AFL's Jets were huge underdogs to the NFL's Colts, Namath was being heckled by Baltimore fans. In response, he said "We're gonna win. I guarantee it." And really, what else was he going to say? What starting quarterback is going to face hecklers from the opposing team and say "You're right, we're gonna get our asses kicked. I don't even know why we're going to take the field." Of course he's going to have confidence, or at least display false confidence. He's the quarterback, the team leader.

Of course, the Jets went out and shocked the Colts. They started slowly, but they completely controlled the game. They were up 16-0 by the time the Colts called an aging Johnny Unitas off the bench to try to lead a comeback attempt. Unitas got the Colts one touchdown, but no more. The Jets had won 16-7, the AFL had beaten the NFL in the Super Bowl for the first time, and Namath ran off the field with his index finger in the air and became a football immortal.

Quickly and permanently, Joe Namath became the story of Super Bowl III, became the reason for the Jets upset. But look closer. Namath remains the only quarterback to win the Super Bowl MVP award without throwing a touchdown pass. Sure, he threw for 206 yards, but Matt Snell ran for 121 yards and a touchdown, and the Jets defense was so dominant that Baltimore starter Earl Morrall went 6-for-17 passing with three interceptions. Namath didn't even throw a pass in the fourth quarter as the Jets turned to the ground to run out the clock.

Sure, Namath played a good game in Super Bowl III. I'm not trying to deny him that. But the Jets played so well they probably would have won with Namath's backup in the game, or with any number of other quarterbacks under center. But that's not what's remembered. The memories of this game revolve around Namath's guarantee, one sentence that somehow has turned him into a legend.